Nebraska jobless rate 2.8 percent for 6th month in a row

The department said in a press release Monday that the preliminary January rate is down a tenth of a point from the January 2018 rate of 2.9 percent.

The January Nebraska rate also was well below the national preliminary January figure of 4 percent — a tenth-of-a-point increase from December.

The preliminary nonfarm employment figure in January was nearly 1.01 million, compared with the adjusted December figure of 1.03 million.

The state says the year-over-year comparison figures for nonfarm employment and other data categories won’t be available until later this month because of the benchmarking process. The state describes benchmarking as the yearly process of aligning estimated data with known employment numbers.